OF SHRUBS, MOSTLY EVERGREEN 31 
are fulgens (this, | remember, bloomed last year, but was 
cut by frost), most dazzling of scarlets in the garden, 
luscombeanum and campylocarpum. I even induced the 
royally beautiful Awcklandi to survive through three un- 
protected winters. The latest novelty I am trying is Smr- 
nowi, large-leaved, but reported very slow-growing, with 
big pink flowers. But the great Rhododendrons cannot 
be introduced too carefully, even too sparingly into the 
rock-garden. Almost invariably their growth is either 
rounded and lumpish, or straggling and gawky. Their 
leafage, too, when the brief glory of the flowers is gone, is 
leaden, dull and depressing. For my part, I detest and flee 
the vast pies and puddings of Rhododendron that prevail 
in all parts of England where the soil admits ponticum, 
catawbiense and their hybrids as almost wild plants. ‘And 
I’m sure it’s no ill-breeding, as the classic poem has it, 
‘if at these repulsive pies, Our offended gorges rise.’ 
They are terribly overdone; the blaze of them in bloom 
is overwhelming; for the remaining eleven months of the 
year they make mere humped domes of lead, gloomy, 
uninteresting, and undistinguished by any countervailing 
grace of line, form, or carriage. 
It is with the smaller species that Rhododendron comes 
to its own in the rock-garden. And yet I must not shrink 
from the truth. I almost dislike the Alpenrose. In fact, 
I do. I have no notion why, but for this glory of the 
Alps I can muster no affection at all—hardly even esteem. 
Its growth is generally straggling, and I am not fond of 
the flowers. And this coldness is not due to the fact that 
neither ferruginewm nor hirsutum ever enjoys itself in my 
gardens; for I like the plants as little in full rot on 
the slopes of the Oberland as I do in sickly dwindling 
specimens on my rock-work. And so let me leave them 
to others. Perhaps their rather harsh colour, not chalky 
exactly, nor magenta, but to me mysteriously acrid and 
